Illusions of Inclusion: Assessment of the World Development Report 2019 on the Changing Nature of Work

The 2019 World Development Report (henceforward WDR 2019) on The Changing Nature of Work examines how livelihoods are being transformed by globalization and digital technologies, and offers a path to a fairer, more inclusive social contract for the world's beleaguered labour forces.Addressing fears about the negative effects of inequality, automation, and de-industrialization, WDR 2019 reassures the reader with narratives of creative destruction, the job creating potential of digital technologies, and plans for increasing investment in universal social protection, and better quality education and healthcare.If this weren't enough to titillate even the most jaded Leftie, WDR 2019 overtly calls for a 'stronger role for governments' in the provision of social protection (p.107).Better still, readers are offered a 'unique level of transparency' in the writing of the report.As the Foreword proudly proclaims, for the first time ever, updated drafts of the report were made publicly available online on a weekly basis throughout the writing process, inviting comments and additions from across the development community.In a context of crises of unemployment, migration, and expanding informal economies, engagement with the topical question of how to develop a more inclusive social contract is of pressing interest to many who work on labour and employment issues.Those familiar with World Development Reports, however, are aware that they are less about engagement with debates on the headline development issue, than about spinning narratives to justify preferred policy directions, often involving efforts to gloss over the problematic consequences of past recommendations.WDR 2019 does not disappoint in this regard.In fact, the intense process of reframing created a feeling of being drawn through the looking glass of an understanding of work in which nothing is what it seems.Despite the copious use of comparative data, detailed examples of experiments and programmes from across the globe, and the celebrated transparency initiative in the writing of the report, the net effect served to obscure more than to clarify.WDR 2019 spins a narrative that makes increasing labour informalization look like a path to decent work, targeted social protection look like universalism, downgrading standards of education and health provision look like promoting equality, taxation reforms that shift resources from labour to capital look like investing in people, and a call for greater deregulation of labour look like a new social contract that 'protects people rather than jobs'.Despite a carefully crafted message, WDR 2019 manages to say very little about what a more just and accountable social contract for 21 st century workers would look like.